8/16/2007 @ 6:00AM

Mo' Money Blues

Think you have estate problems? Take a look at the fighting over slain rapper Tupac Shakur and other hip-hoppers.

The words “rapper” and “estate planning” don’t usually go together in the same sentence. Maybe they should, given the travails of some deceased hip-hoppers. Eleven years since he was killed in an as yet unsolved drive-by shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur still can’t rest in peace. Shakur, 25 at the time of his murder, left no will. A fierce battle broke out between his mother, Afeni Shakur, and Marion “Suge” Knight, the founder of now defunct Death Row Records (which included rap icons such as Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg). At stake: Shakur’s catalog of six studio albums and 153 unpublished songs, worth an estimated $60 million. The pair settled in 1997, agreeing that Knight would keep the rights to records recorded under Death Row, while Afeni Shakur retained the unreleased tracks.

But Knight tried to exploit a lucrative loophole that would allow him to buy an album’s worth of Tupac’s unpublished tracks for a measly $100,000 during a two-month window that expires at the end of August. Their estimated worth: as much as $10 million. In July an attorney for Death Row petitioned a Los Angeles bankruptcy court to lend it the $100,000 from Knight’s liquidated assets to buy the tracks. Knight had filed for bankruptcy in 2006 claiming $137 million in debts.

Afeni Shakur filed an injunction to halt the purchase, alleging that Knight and his Death Row cronies hid some of Shakur’s unreleased material from the estate. The parties are now discussing a revised deal. “Rappers live in the moment,” sighs Afeni Shakur’s attorney Donald David. “But one of the bad things about living in the moment is you don’t do your paperwork.”

Heirs of Brooklyn rapper Russell “Ol’ Dirty Bastard” Jones, cofounder of Wu-Tang Clan, are still tussling over his estate three years after the troubled rhyme-master died of a drug overdose. Jones left behind an unreleased album, $312,000 in debts and at least seven children by five women. Will? What will? Eric “Eazy-E” Wright, cofounder of the seminal rap group N.W.A., topped that by having nine kids by seven women, the last of whom he married days before he died of AIDS in 1995. She got the estate and a welter of lawsuits from heirs and business associates followed. The dispute was later settled. Note to Jay-Z, first on our adjoining list of top-earning rappers: Write a good will.